This site wants to put me and my belly into a christmas mood with it's cute pink ridden color scheme and all those sweet cookie images. :) The layout is quite decent as well, reminding me of a theme I've seen before, but without some of the issues it had. Teaser blocks on the homepage are very well differentiated from their background and the spacing between them and other elements (including header and footer) is pretty much perfect giving it all a very orderly and neat look and feel.

Diverse attractive images of sweet cookies are available in each teaser on each page of articles which is great. One little issue that remains with teasers, however, is that they cut the article titles and teasers sometimes in the middle of the word.

The header is I think a little too dark or at least the bar which contains the home link is too dark compared to the background being hard to distinguish, at least on some LCD monitors. The same goes for the input field of the search box. The header image of the site, containing the title, is quite attractive and stylish baiting the visitor with a half bitten cookie that is itself (fittingly to the color scheme) pink. However, it feels a little too far from the main frame of the site. It might be a good idea to try reducing the amount of space between it and the home bar. It might also be a good idea to try putting the search box to the home bar as well freeing space in the header for, perhaps, an unobtrusive banner ad.

At the bottom of the home page and other pages listing article teasers the only element not matching the pink color scheme appears to be the pager. All it would take is changing the link color of pager links to the same pink of article titles or otherwise to something gray like the links in the sidebar.

Sidebar doesn't need the categories block since there seem to be only "uncategorized" articles.

Moving on to the article pages, unfortunately the situation deteriorates somewhat. The teaser image is gone and the square ads tend to be "in your face". They're styled to fit the site's color scheme, but not the text size which could be set to the same size as the ad in the sidebar. The margins between the ads and the content also seems a bit too low causing some overlaps with the content, especially bullet lists.

That said, I like the bullet style of lists within articles (and in the sidebar for that matter) and I like the emphasis that the size gives to section titles although they could nevertheless be just a little smaller because they almost outsize the article title itself.

Overall not bad at all, but there is some room for improvement.

Design Rating: 8/10

Focus:

It's a yet another "no brainer" case considering that the title and domain name spell out the site's purpose quite clearly and the site's content both visually and textually follows it to the tee. BestCookieRecipe.net provides cookie recipes. Whether they're the best is, I suppose, up to each reader to decide, especially those more in the know in cookie making.

Focus Rating: 10/10

Content:

BestCookieRecipe.net offers seven pages of six recipes, that is, whole of 42 cookie recipes. I'd say that's enough for the season. :) The great thing about these articles is that they all consistently use a single outline starting with an engaging introduction and then sections on preparation time, cook time, tools, ingredients, sometimes variations and finally instructions. And they are presented in list form therefore being easier to follow through. This is one suggestion I typically make for sites that provide "how to" type of content so I'm pleased to see this site follow it.

What else can I say? I'm tempted to find a favorite recipe and try one of these recipes myself.

Content Rating: 10/10

"Simple elegance" is what came to my mind when I opened this site. The site actually looks like two teared strips of paper put on top of each other with the white one serving the main content and the yellow-ish one such complementary information as the site title, categories and the latest articles. This color scheme fits the topic of the site quite well and helps put the user in the complementary mood.

All of this is further decorated with tasty food images including a nice small pumpkin icon image marking each title, cucumber icon for the sidebar home link and chilly pepper icons for block titles in the sidebar which are nicely colored on mouse hover. One suggestion I would make with regards to food images in the sidebar is to perhaps make them rotate between multiple images of food as the visitor refreshes or visits other pages.

Article pages are a somewhat less pleasant view however. The title of articles seems to lose its style and displays as just a plain big link. Furthermore the two square ads within content seem to overlap with the text on some articles and the style of these ads is not adapted to the site's color scheme instead still using the default google adsense look.

It might also be worth checking if the "related posts" list below the articles could be moved a little more to the left. The bullets seem quite close to the border of the site. The spacing between elements below the articles also seems a bit odd; too much space between "share and enjoy" widgets and related posts, between related posts and "leave a comment" title and also between "leave a comment" title and the actual comment form. It all seems a little too spaced out except for the related posts part which could actually use a little more margin between its title and the actual list.

All in all, this is a pretty good design, but the article pages still need some work and polish to make the overall look and feel more consistently pleasant.

Design Rating: 7/10

Focus:

RecipeIdeas.org is quite simply and obviously a recipe resource. The title and domain name are unambiguous and informative. Although it is technically recipes that the site appears to offer this may be conflated with "ideas" given that it may indeed give the user new ideas as to what to cook and how.

Content is well categorized by various types of food such as beef, chicken, pasta, pork and so on, though there is one odd "recipes" category which probably contains recipes which couldn't fit any other or might be mixed. One article is "uncategorized" however which could fit this general "recipes" category.

Overall the focus of the site is clear and consistently followed by its categorization and content so this is a no brainer even without any kind of an introduction or an about page (which always add value, but in this case are less necessary).

Focus Rating: 10/10

Content:

There's plenty of recipes to be found, total of 179 of them as can be conveniently counted from the categories block. The style is simple; a quick affirming introduction, ingredients you need and instructions. Articles are brief and to the point with practically no fluff whatsoever making them easier to digest. Instructions could still however be better presented in step by step numbered list form, especially in cases where there may be more than a few steps to follow. As someone who cooks for myself, I may definitely find this useful.

Content Rating: 10/10